An antenna is a device that can both transmit and receive electromagnetic waves of energy. Designing an antenna can be a complicated task because of the inherent properties of electromagnetics. Presently, antenna engineers physically scale or modify conventional antennas to best meet a particular application. However, in many instances, this procedure is suboptimal because a suitable conventional antenna may not exist or is not similar enough to meet a particular need. Antennas with broadband frequency coverage are desirable so the antenna can operate in a greater number of applications, but many conventional antennas with broadband coverage also include inadequacies that render them ultimately unacceptable.
For example, a multi-turn spiral antenna is a broadband antenna. However, the gain of the spiral antenna is essentially flat with frequency. The optimal use of the aperture area would yield a gain that increases with frequency, so the spiral antenna is suboptimal from because of its increases in gain over frequency.
Another example of a broadband antenna is the bow-tie antenna. A bow-tie antenna will radiate over a wide range of frequencies. Because the direction of radiation for the bow-tie antenna changes over the range of frequency, this feature renders the bowtie as suboptimal.
Thus, there is a need for an antenna that can overcome these limitations, deficiencies and inadequacies that is heretofore unaddressed.